Some Pandora subscribers will see their plans or monthly rates change as the music-streaming company compensates for higher costs.

According to Pandora's blog, new Pandora One users will see a price increase from $3.99 to $4.99 per month come May 2014. Existing customers, however, will stay locked into the $3.99 per month price for now.

In other words, if you've been on the fence about subscribing to Pandora One, you'll want to do so before May.

Pandora also said that it would axe its annual subscription option and instead replace it with the monthly $3.99 fee. It seems that is going into effect immediately for new customers, but those with an existing annual Pandora account will be notified of the change when their renewal time comes around.

Pandora cited growing costs for content delivery as the reason for the rates and plan changes.

"We’ve been fortunate to be able to offer Pandora One at an affordable price since its debut in 2009 at $36 per year and later with the introduction of a monthly subscription for only $3.99 per month," said Pandora. "Over this same period, the costs of delivering this service have grown considerably. For example, the royalty rates Pandora pays to performers via SoundExchange for subscription listening have increased 53% in the last five years and will increase another 9% in 2015."

Pandora isn't the only Web service feeling the pressure with content costs. Amazon recently announced that it will up annual Prime costs from $79 to $99 a year when current customer's renewal periods are up.

In an effort to keep customers interested, Pandora lifted its monthly cap on free mobile listening back in September 2013 -- just ahead of the iTunes Radio Launch.

Used to listen to Pandora (free with ads) almost every day. Until they started airing what seemed like a boatload of political ads. While I could stomach a political ad once in a while, it became too much to be bearable.

There are other services out there - like Spotify - which do the same thing, and are better at it, too!

Not only Spotify allows you to play any song from any album in their collection (no BS about it like on Pandora), their ads are also less intrusive. One thing that was wrong about Spotify is the premium-only mobile app; which they rectified in the recent months.

For all I care - either Pandora needs to reform to stay up with the competition or die.

Yeah, zero sympathy. I switched to beats music after my yearly Pandora subscription recently ran out and I couldn't be happier with the switch. Pandora blows in comparison in both content and features.

I don't mind paying $36 a year, I'm not tripling that just to use Spotify.

I guess I'll stick with Pandora for now but if the parasitical 'music' corporations continue with their antics then Pandora might go by the wayside as well. Maybe that's the plan? Elimination through litigation rather than innovation?

I agree. My radio can Bluetooth to my phone and control Pandora from the headset, so I was really psyched a couple years ago when I bought it. Then, Pandora would just crash a lot due to the implementation somehow. Bummer.

Fast-forward a couple of years after having taken break from the service. Last week I did an app update and started trying it out again. It's like every 2 or 3 songs there is an ad including skips/next two seconds in.

I get I don't pay for the service, but from a free-user enjoyment stand-point, it does little to make me want to buy into the service and it's certainly a last-resort in it's free state. I can only listen to progressive insurance commercials every 2-3 songs for so long.

Most of my friends mention a couple other good free options, however, so I suppose I'll check them out when I have time.